Tenoch Huerta’s career has taken a giant leap with a slew of first class roles in his native Mexican cinema. He won an Ariel Award and was nominated four other times, in productions like the renowned Sin nombre (by Cary Joji Fukunaga), and the streaming series Narcos: México, where he played Rafael Caro Quintero, as well as the upcoming The Forever Purge. While it’s still up in the air if he’ll be the villain in the sequel to Black Panther, Huerta is taking part in the Sundance Film Festival with Son of Monarchs, a movie from French-Venezuelan filmmaker Alexis Gambis, set to receive the Alfred P. Sloane Award, given every year to a movie with a scientific focus. In the movie, Huerta plays Mendel, a Mexican scientist who investigates the genetics of butterflies in New York, and who must return to his native Michoacan to attend a funeral. The cast of the Mexico-US coproduction includes William Mapother, Noe Hernandez, Venezuelan-born Electra Avellan, Angelina Pelaez and Paulina Gaitan.  

Tenoch, what does it mean for you that Son of Monarchs is at the Sundance Film Festival? 

To me is incredibly meaningful. I’m so happy that a movie I was a part of is screened at the Sundance Film Festival. Apart from being the first of the year, is one of the most important film festivals of its kind. For a film like Son of Monarchs, whose theme is the physical and emotional effects of migration, and the experiences of a person when they’re on the move, it becomes a great framing device for everything that is going on in the U. S., specially in the past 4 years, because what takes place there isn’t generally relegated to a government but it’s a cultural phenomenon. I definitely think this kind of stories become very relevant.

Son of Monarchs is a complex and interesting movie, specially in regards to your character. It breaks a lot of stereotypes and speaks of, I suppose, your own experience of living between the United States and Mexico.  

I think the movie breaks stereotypes, specially stereotypes in cinema, television and in the media, because in real life there are people of all colors, shapes and sizes in positions of leadership. Generally there are scientists of all stripes, nationalities and phenotypes out there, but on television, movies or in the ads, only some ethnic origin, a physical type or a skin color relates, or doesn’t, with a specific profession, specially science. In that sense, I think, with a simple casting choice, the movie broke with a lot of stereotypes. Personally I’ve worked a couple of times in the United States and I have no need to migrate nor to go there frequently- like many of my compatriots do, or others in the continent who cross the border for other reasons and under different conditions. This is a privilege I enjoy, and I want to stress this, because I fly to the United States with a work visa while most people put their lives on the line at the border, risking their lives, to possibly die from trying to cross a vast desert, or die of extreme heat, or at the hands of the border agents or a white supremacist, to then live under a new type of  21^st century slavery, that is the life of the undocumented worker. In the case of my character in Son of Monarchs, he migrated for his skills, his talent, his scientific input, and I feel identified although I didn’t have to migrate for such a long time to the United States, as so many did.

It seems you joined the project early on and almost by chance, right?  

Yes, it was a bit like that. A very good friend of mine was a close collaborator of Alexis Gambis at the time, and told me about this project of this director, who is also a scientist, who was looking for an actor to play this role. She suddenly approached me and asked me whether he could contact me, because he thought of me for the project. I said yes and liked it very much. I was very impressed by what I was able to see onscreen and I think most audiences will make a deep connection with the movie, not only film critics and people in the business, and that’s obviously a great surprise. It’s so nice that Son of Monarchs is at Sundance and that we were able to win a prize. 

I know you’re interested in science. What did you learn while playing this character? 

I’m quite a fanatic. Practically most of the YouTube channels I follow are science related, or of historians, languages or philosophers. For example, I understood perfectly how CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) works, the gene editing method. It was pretty exciting and it’s a fascinating world. Also, because of movies, series or cartoons, it would seem that science is made of big leaps where you suddenly find the Holy Grail, but no, science is build small block by small block – it’s that grind, that discipline, even mechanic, of the daily work, sometimes tedious, how things really work. Science marches forward exactly like life, not out of any “Eureka” moment but out of making daily decisions, performing an action in a disciplined way, in the best way possible, executing little moments that add up and lead to the bigger moments.

I know your dad was really convinced you would do something related to theater and at the beginning you got into it due to his insistence. What do you think he saw in you?

I have no clue. One time I asked him, why did he insist that I take acting classes, and he simply said “It’s something I saw in you,” and I was okay with that because, independently of whatever this “it” was, what’s wonderful and marvelous, on a personal level, even psychologically, therapeutically- as I’ve told my analyst -is to know that my father saw me at that moment, and that he continues to do so today. And that gave me a great relationship with my parents! 

Did you ever had a plan B in place?

I keep coming up with thousands of plan Bs. This is what happens when you’re a little obsessive and it’s how am I with certain things. I was telling my analyst- and let me be clear that I’m a great fan of therapy and I recommend it every time I can -that when people are successful it’s because they’re obsessive, so I’m always trying to prevent anything awful. One of my plan Bs was becoming a nature photographer and shoot documentaries, go to faraway and wild places and do portraits of nature, for instance, or to be a director. In fact I’m now beginning to set up a few projects for real, one to co-direct and another one to direct on my own. At the end of the day, however, in spite of everything, I’m still enjoying the plan that gave me 15 wondrous years, and the possibility of giving my family and I a better lifestyle, apart from making me fortunate to change my way of looking at things and gain a better understanding of the world. For now, plan A keeps working great but when that goes under, I’ll spruce up my plan B, but I’ll probably won’t do any of that and instead I will end up working in a bank or somewhere incredibly boring.

Do you think that having met with Gael García Bernal so early in your career helped your plan A so well in the end?

Yes, obviously, not only him but also all the directors I got to know in my career, they have helped me a lot. In my first year as an actor I made 5 movies and, according to the Actors Union delegate, I became the hardest working actor that year. With the movie Nesio, that I did as soon as I’ve finished my first year and began my second year of acting, I had been nominated to an Ariel Award- given every year by the Academy of Mexican Cinema Arts and Sciences -and I began to meet with great directors very quickly, and in that regard Gael was an important factor and the first who, at a professional level, believed in me. I was also lucky to have met Alonso Ruizpalacios, Everardo Gout and Cary Fukunaga, all of whom were crucial to my development, as well as every other director I’ve met all these years. Every moment I’ve shared with all of them was vital, beginning with my teacher and mentor Carlos Torres Torija, and Elisa Miller, who slipped my picture with my CV everywhere, and through her is how I met and was hired by Gael. There’s been a lot of important people later on and I don’t want to underestimate my own talent, I’m well aware of it, as I am of my own discipline, but these two qualities by themselves aren’t enough to take you to the top of your game, not unless you’re a millionaire and then you can do as you please.